Lullaby
by Withered White Rose
Summary: Hush my child, let Mother sing you a lullaby.
1. Chapter 1

The Third Hokage watched the small blond as he tossed and turned in fitful sleep, after all the hospital beds couldn't really be that comfortable. A half whine started from the boy's throat and was quickly cut off before Sarutobi could hush his pseudo-grandson.

Sarutobi watched as Naruto stilled, his pained features smoothed, and his sporadic moans of pain quieted. With a relieved sigh, Sarutobi left the hospital bed in a rush of wind and leaves, leaving no one the wiser to his visit.

Soft, warm fur cradled the child, her child, soothing his pain. Hatred bubbled under her skin, though not for the boy in her embrace, no it was reserved for those who assumed they could wound HER kin without retribution. Naruto squirmed and cried out. She hushed him quietly, licking his bleeding cheek gently, comforting him. Those disgusting! She roared, her son cried out again. Allowing her warm chakra to seep into the toddler, she sang quietly, hoping to distract her child from the pain.

_**Hush child, hush**_

_**Your mother loves you still**_

_**Your broken body, bruised and bloody limbs**_

_**Those awful men have had their fill**_

_**But mother will love you forever**_

_**But hush, hush**_

_**My darling, my babe**_

_**Mother's here to tend**_

_**And if your strength should ever waver**_

_**Mother's here to lend**_

_**So draw your steel**_

_**My darling, my dearest**_

_**Mother your wounds will heal**_

_**And to your life **_

_**My baby, my baby**_

_**Mother will raise her peal**_

_**So hush now my baby**_

_**Hush**_

_**Let mommy take your hand**_

_**If they touch you again**_

_**Mother will burn this land**_

Her son fell still, his wounds sealing, clear purple tinged eyes watching her in adoration. She continued to hum as she rocked her son sweetly, her nine tails wrapped securely around his tiny body. Her slitted, ruby eyes granting Naruto the only love he had ever known, here in his mother's presence he was safe.

_**Hush, hush.**_

_**My baby, my baby**_

_**Let mommy lead you right.**_

_**Your mother is the only one you can trust**_

_**Let mommy hold you tight**_

_**My son,**_

_**You'll yet hold the King's stave**_

_**And with your mother's guiding hand**_

_**Lead the others to the grave.**_

Naruto dropped his head, her eyelids fluttered as well; healing her child while well worth the effort decimated her energy stores. Lowering her head next to her fur wrapped son. They slept.


	2. Chapter 2

**OH! Those Kami-damned FOOLS! **Kyuubi tore at the bars of her cage, pacing, forever pacing. She felt and yet did not feel her container's pain, undiluted cyanide snaked through the infant's body courtesy of a silencing jutsu and a vengeful nurse. As the baby's pain grew greater SHE howled in fury and pain. Her cries woke the sleeping infant curled in the nest of pelts she had managed to find somewhere. _**Hush **__hush, __**there is no need to cry.**_The babe continued to scream_. __**Shhhh, I know, I know it hurts. But shhhh , I will make it all better.**_With a last burning glare at the bars, Kyuubi returned to the child's side, curling her paws around him to make a kind of cradle. _**Hush, hush. There's a good boy. Now you listen while I clean up that awful woman's mess.**_And she spoke, her voice low and sweet, she told him of death, and how blood felt as it ran against one's paws, how it matted in the fur and clung to the muzzle. She told him of the hunt, spinning mountains and forests and rivers from the air, creating a pair of foxes and a warren of rabbits from mere memory. She told him how after the oldest kits first hunt his mother proudly licked the blood from his muzzle and cleaned the cuts on his still-soft paws. Her stories would conjure worlds for this child, as many as needed. Her vengeance nestled deeper into her fur, tiny consciousness dimmed enough for her to rip the cyanide from his body, yes this tiny creature was strong, strong enough to bear her legacy, to spill blood in her name; he was strong enough to be her son. She cooed to the sleeping baby, _**Sleep my baby, dream of fire and blood. Mother will make you strong. **_She gently stroked eight of her tails across the baby's cheeks, coaxing whiskers from human flesh, the final tail rested against the boy's chest. _**Mstislav, my vengeance and glory, a fitting title for you my son.**_


	3. Chapter 3

A boy, no older than nine, sat, unmoving, observing those below him. With his head cocked slightly to the side he caught sounds and syllables, mumbles and shouts that formed strange words. The words these creatures spoke had no taste, they had no substance or feeling; they were empty. Mstislav, was not used to words that held no taste; when his mother spoke her words had a taste, he could feel them across his skin, feel the weight of her voice and her words across his mind and body. These creatures were not even using a tongue that made sense to him, all their sounds were a rough, jumbled mess; could these creatures really _communicate_ like that? Did they listen? Mstislav watched, greedily drinking in everything about these creatures that were so familiar and yet so strange.

"_What are they saying?"_ he asked softly, confusion always tasted like lemon to him or maybe unsweetened chocolate (both uncomfortably bitter, but with the chance of becoming something sweeter), "De-mon" the sounds felt strange in his mouth, thick and clumsy, "_what are they saying? Okaa-sama?"_

"_**Do not trouble yourself with them my dear heart" **_Mstislav closed his eyes for a moment, reveling in the feeling of her voice; it was like silk across skin, smooth and lulling, with no snag to catch or trip it up, _**"they are nothing more than insects to be crushed on your rise to glory." **_

"_Hai, Okaa-sama. Will you tell me a story?" _The child turned from the window too intent upon the sound of his mother's voice to notice the murderous shouts that echoed after him through the open apartment window. "Demon" "Hell-spawn" "Demon child" "We should kill it" "It's lived too long already". Kyuubi spoke of the wind and the rain and the feeling of sun on ones fur and the freedom of running through the forest; her son knew none of these things. He found her tales of a world outside their 'den' fantastical, utterly impossible; surely none of these things could truly exist.

The sounds of riot broke out their force carrying them to Mstislav's still open window; he curled happily into his mass of blankets.

The whisper of fire moved into the timbers six stories below the child; he slept, dreaming of splotched sun and bird-song.


	4. Chapter 4

Children are victims of circumstance, ninja should understood this better than most, children are crushed beneath the weight of sins they did not commit, and unattainable imaginings of those around them. That did not stop some from hating the child curled on the white hospital bed before them; skin and muscle slowly regenerating even devoid of all treatment. Blond hair slowly tingeing strawberry, was singed to his scalp growing ever so slowly, boiled skin sloughing off in chunks to reveal the mutilated but healing bones and muscles of his tiny body.

"Shouldn't that thing be healing faster?" one of the guards (faceless beneath his white mask) demanded of the other, "Normally it takes a few days, not weeks, and never months for it to heal up, all better and be out of our hair." Mstislav was with his mother, he knew nothing else. He listened to his mother's voice as she spun stories.

Stories he didn't recognize as lessons.

Games he didn't recognize as training.

Toys he didn't recognize as weapons.

His mother molded him, in the silence of his mind.

Violet eyes opened. A fanged mouth opened in a childish smile.

"**Go play with the masked ones my darling. Mommy's going to sleep awhile."** Mstislav tilted his head in confusion.

"_But mama, I don't have anything to play with."_ Mstislav pouted, he wanted to play.

"**Go play with the masked ones."** Tiny needles appeared in his hand.

Mstislav left the hospital, a pout resting on his lips; the guards only knew how to 'play dead'; how unfortunate.


End file.
